Easy DIY Miniature Trees

I love Christmas village displays! I've been slowly building up my display over the years and the one thing it was missing was bare trees. This is an easy way to make snow covered bare trees in about 20 minutes!

You'll need:

-Brown craft wire

-A hot glue gun

-A bunch of white hot glue sticks

-Sturdy corrugated cardboard

-Spray glue

-Calcium carbonate (or ground sidewalk chalk)

-Joint compound

Step 1: The Brown Craft Wire

First, take 8-10 or any even number of wires and twist them in the middle and down towards the bottom. You will bend this bunch of wires somewhere around the middle to make the base and branches.

Bending the wires in half will give you the same length of branches on top. I bend mine lower to create both long and short branches.

Step 2: Making the Branches

Next, you'll twist two wires from the bunch tightly together to make all of the main branches.

Then you'll cut craft wire in half to make the extra branches. The extra branches can be tightly twisted any where on the tree.

Step 3: The Tree

Your tree should look something like this. If it's not sturdy, reinforce it by tightly twisting extra craft wire around the entire tree. It should feel strong.

Step 4: The Tree Base

If you don't have white hot glue sticks, don't worry. You can paint over hot glue when it has cooled down.

For the base, cut any shape you want out of the sturdy corrugated cardboard.

Next, use the base of your tree and poke a hole in the middle of the cardboard.

The last step is to generously glue the tree into the hole and also glue around the outside of the cardboard.

When the tree is standing strong, build a hot glue collar around the bottom of the tree where it's stuck in the base to make it stronger. You'll also cover the entire top of the corrugated cardboard with hot glue to give it a textured look.

Remember, you can paint the glue if you don't have white.

Step 5: The Spray Glue and Snow

I used 3M brand spray glue. It sprays out like thick spider webs and dries quickly. It's best to lay down some newspaper to protect the area you're working over.

My snow mixture is calcium carbonate sprinkled with joint compound. My brand of joint compound is a nice off white color, so I only added it for color reasons. I've also successfully used ground up white sidewalk chalk.

You can also sprinkle in a little glitter too.

Step 6: Gluing on the Snow

You should definitely use gloves for this!

All you do is spray glue, sprinkler powder, shake the tree a little over to collect extra powder, wait a minute and repeat. Do this until have have the look you're going for.

*You will have a little bit of powder falling off when handling a finished tree. It will stop after time.